The creation or presentation of instructional material for musical instruments has been disclosed in U.S. patents and in current products. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,585,583 entitled Interactive Musical Instrument Instruction System describes a means to utilize a CD-ROM electronic storage medium to store audio and video musical instrument instructional materials. Animation, voice, music, video and imagery are integrated in real-time and provide complete control to the music student. Similarly, instructional CD-ROMs that integrate animation, voice, music, video and imagery to aid the music student in an instructional environment are commercially available. The described systems operate as installed applications on a local computer. Instructional material is not available to the on-line user nor as a web-based application. Additionally, the systems do not allow a user to author the instructional material.
A number of music sequencing computer software programs are available that install and operate on the hard drive of a local computer and allow users to compose and to notate music examples. Examples of such programs are Logic Audio, from Emagic Soft und Hardware GmbH, Rellingen, Germany and Cubase, from Steinberg Soft und Hardware GmbH, Hamburg, Germany. Music sequencers provide users with an interface to input musical information, to edit this information, to play back this information as music, and in most cases, to print out the music in either standard music notation or tablature. Tablature is another form of visual notation for a musical performance. It often offers instrument-specific information to a musician, and there are variants of tablature depending on the musical instrument of interest. For example, guitar tablature tells a guitarist the exact string and fret to use when playing a specific note. For a drummer, drum tablature specifies which drum (such as a snare or a bass drum) is to be used for a particular musical event. None of these computer programs allow its user to store this information on a remote server over a wide area network such as the Internet or to instantaneously publish this information as music instructional material to on-line users. None of these computer programs exist as a web-based application.
An authoring and display system for digital sheet music has been disclosed by the Sunhawk Corporation, Seattle, Wash. In this system, authors install software on their local computer to create musical scores featuring standard music notation and tablature. Users of this information install a viewer on their local computer, and can download musical scores from the Internet, which were created by the authoring software. The viewer allows a user to examine these musical scores and to listen to these scores as MIDI music. However, neither the authoring nor viewing system can store, modify, or access information on a remote server over a wide area network such as the Internet. Neither the authoring nor viewing system exists as a web-based application.
Several patents disclose special apparatus to aid students with the performance of their instrument. U.S. Pat. No. 3,837,256 entitled Sight And Sound Musical Instrument Instruction, describes an apparatus that uses illumination means associated with certain keys or frets of musical instruments to teach music students. U.S. Pat. No. 4,386,551 entitled Method And Apparatus For Teaching Musical Instruments, describes a method and apparatus for simultaneously teaching multiple students how to play a musical instrument. U.S. Pat. No. 4,791,848 entitled System For Facilitating Instruction Of Musicians, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,408,914 entitled Musical Instrument Training System Having Displays To Identify Fingering, Playing and Instructional Information both describe systems that use a fingering display to guide a music student in his or her performance, and an input mechanism to record or analyze the student""s performance. All of these patent require a special apparatus. None of them are available to the on-line user as a web-based application and none have any notational output.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,457,282 entitled Automatic Accompaniment Apparatus Having Arrangement Function With Beat Adjustment, describes an apparatus for memorizing, storing, editing, and reproducing musical accompaniment patterns. Again, special apparatus is required and there is no teaching of availability to the on-line user as a web application. Similarly, a computer software application called xe2x80x9cBand-in-a-Boxxe2x80x9d from PG Music, Victoria, B.C. allows users to specify a musical arrangement using a small number of parameters. Users pick specific music chords to play in each measure of an arrangement, pick a musical style (such as jazz or rock) and the software generates a musical arrangement. This concept is also embodied in U.S. Pat. No. 4,624,170 entitled Electronic Musical Instrument With Automatic Accompaniment Function, which describes an electronic instrument that allows the user to manually select different kinds of rhythms and automatic accompaniment patterns. This concept has been implemented in some electronic keyboards made by manufacturers such as Casio and Yamaha, which allow the user to choose and play an accompaniment style to supplement their solo playing on the instrument itself. Band-in-a-Box provides additional functionality by allowing users to print out a score of their musical arrangement. None of these patents or products allow its users to store this information on a remote server over a wide area network such as the Internet. They do not allow users to create or publish this information using the World Wide Web, nor do they exist as web-based applications.
The present invention provides temporary web-based applications that reside in a standard web browser. The invention allows a user (1) to remotely create, update, and store instructional material for various musical instruments, (2) to dynamically interpret subsets of stored information for to permit the display of visual notation of musical examples and descriptive text in a standard web browser, and (3) to dynamically interpret subsets of stored information to provide customizable music playback using a standard web browser.
The present invention further provides for open access to this electronic authoring, publishing, and display system to any Internet user with a standard web browser. This enables users to create, publish, and view music instructional material upon their first encounter with the system.
Another advantage of the present invention is that it allows users to compose, edit, and publish solo musical instrument passages, with customizable music playback, using a standard web browser.
Still another advantage of the present invention is that it allows users to compose, edit, and publish musical arrangements using a standard web browser, with customizable music playback. In addition, users can create arrangement templates that govern the specific individual instrument parts that comprise the arrangements. Such arrangement templates, or xe2x80x9cmusical style sheets,xe2x80x9d can be shared among users of the system, thereby allowing users to pick an arrangement style that best fits the musical examples they present in their published instructional material from a variety of user-generated arrangement templates.
A further advantage of the present invention is that it allows users to combine solo musical passages and musical arrangements in a musical instructional example using a standard web browser, with customizable music playback of the combined musical output.
Yet another advantage of the present invention is that it allows users to augment their musical examples with explanatory text, images, tables, and diagrams, thus providing all of the basic elements normally associated with music instructional material.